Kay Ryan:
Current mood — and inability to understand how the world works — has Michael Budde ringing in my ears. I’m surrounded by housing markets that I do not understand or control; city and state planning projects that I do not understand or control; job markets that I do not understand or control; health care systems that I do not understand or control; performance evaluations that I do not understand or control; compliance items and training modules that I do not understand or control — all of which presuppose the inability to do anything about any of it.
Is cog-in-machine syndrome a diagnosable condition? 😵💫
Simon notes the enormous popularity of Faustian fables in the nineteenth century, characterized by something new: “the possibility of people being victorious against the cloven-hoofed one, of being more talented in the skills of wit and duplicity.” …
Today… We’re all Faustians now. These days, Simon argues, in an excoriating, eloquent final chapter, we write our contracts not in blood but in silicon—both figuratively, insofar as we sign away our identities and privacies for all the short-term benefits of material ease, and literally, whenever we scroll rapidly through one of those unreadable online contracts, eager only to assent. Somewhere out there in the ether, the ghost in the machine hears our weak little mouse clicks and pricks up his horns.
Currently Reading: Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching by Ursula K. Le Guin 📚; and also: Walter Brueggemann’s Prophetic Imagination by Conrad L. Kanagy 📚
They’ve been standing next to each other on the queue shelf for months, and I’m curious what they’ve been talking about 🤓
The sacrificial Joker
Image from Steve Robinson
Also this:
This hand learned to print, color inside the lines, bathe a dead man, draw outside the lines, build houses, churches, high-rise offices and coffins, write cursive, wipe a tear, change the diapers of a child and a parent, pour a beer (both into a glass and down the drain), dig a grave, knead a loaf of bread dough, type a Master’s thesis, a blog post and a book manuscript, put a Band-aid on a boo-boo, cook for dozens and for one, turn a page, pull a trigger, bait a hook, clean a toilet, pet a mean dog, sew a button, point in the wrong direction, flip off an idiot, shake hands, beat an adversary, dress a bishop, caress a beloved, anoint the dead, wave goodbye, build a bobber motorcycle and twist its throttle, make a bar-chord and play the blues, torque a bolt, snap a picture, cleanse a chalice, handle a snake, slap my forehead, hang on too long and let go too soon….
“Whatsoever thine hand shall find to do, do with all thy might…” Ecclesiastes 9:10, and I have done so.
And there’s much more from Robinson’s “Free Pithless Thought.” That was a lovely gift in the inbox this morning. I’m going to feel like a glutton reading anything else today.
Flipping through Berry’s A Timbered Choir. I do think you can see the love and even the cheerfulness that Andrew Peterson has seen in Berry’s personality and hospitality.
Russel Moore’s tribute to Wendell Berry here is lovely.
I was at a medical conference at some mega church — and I do mean mega — in Louisville 6 or 7 years ago. This church had an enormous lobby, complete with its own giant escalator and substantial bookstore. I remember one of lecturers (half?) joking that if you wanted to know what was wrong with the church today, just go down to the bookstore in the lobby. “One of the best living writers lives 50 miles from here and there isn’t one of his books on the shelves.” He added that he’d asked the people who ran it about Wendell Berry. They said they’d never heard of him.
Conversations stopper of the day:
“Have you seen that trend on TickTock…?”